# Ernest Junius ## Posts - [Weightless in Orbit](https://ernestjunius.com/weightless-in-orbit/): On Orbital, Space, and the Absence of Discovery For a space enthusiast who is also interested in philosophy, Orbital should be my kind of novel. From its premise, it is depicted as a quiet, reflective work, and from the length of the book, a restrained one. To seal the deal, it also won the Man Booker Prize. Set aboard the International Space Station, Orbital presents astronauts circling Earth, observing its beauty, fragility, and continuity. The novel is lyrical and carefully composed, but halfway through it becomes clear that space here is not a mysterious force that pressures thought and action. Instead,... Continue reading → - [We Think About the Future All the Time. We Just Do It Badly.](https://ernestjunius.com/we-think-about-the-future-all-the-time-we-just-do-it-badly/): Disclosure: A digital review copy of Could, Should, Might, Don’t was provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is how I spend my slow hours at work: I put on videos of AI-generated “futuristic ambience” showing spaceship interiors that look suspiciously like luxury resorts, complete with reclining beach chairs and a giant planet hovering majestically in the background. And as I sit there, physically filling spreadsheets, my mind has admittedly never left the vicinity of the spaceship. I’m absolutely obsessed with the future. What Nick Foster’s Could, Should, Might, Don’t helped me realize, however, is that while we live in an age... Continue reading → - [The Privilege of Losing](https://ernestjunius.com/the-privilege-of-losing/): I’m in love with competition, just not about winning.  You’ve probably known the feeling: the flutter of butterflies in your stomach, the restless nights of practice—or of not practicing, but staying awake anyway, fueled by adrenaline and expectation. Then comes the day of the competition. You look around at the other contestants: their relaxed confidence, the fire in their eyes, the effortless ease in their posture. And in that moment, a quiet sobriety settles in—you sense that most of them are more experienced, maybe even better than you. You give your best, or you freeze under the pressure, but by... Continue reading → - [Stoicism in the Undertow](https://ernestjunius.com/stoicism-in-the-undertow/): Why Seneca’s Stoicism Matters More in an Age of Crisis Normalization For many readers today, Stoicism has become shorthand for an emotional-discipline hack that promises focus, less anxiety, no drama, better productivity. From The Daily Stoic to the closer-to-home Filosofi Teras, the philosophy has been repackaged as an everyday toolkit: a clean, actionable method for staying calm amid everyday conflicts, deadlines, and the noise of social media. It works. It has introduced millions to an ancient school once seen as marble-hard and forbidding, at a moment when an overworked, anxious generation living through a normalized state of crisis needs a... Continue reading → - [The Temptation of Declaring Capitalism Dead](https://ernestjunius.com/the-temptation-of-declaring-capitalism-dead/): In Technofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis maps the dangers of the platform economy with forbidding clarity, but his obituary for capitalism reads more like desire than diagnosis. Yanis Varoufakis has never written like an economist. In Technofeudalism, he addresses his late father in a series of reflections on technology, power, and the fate of capitalism. The device softens the polemic and humanizes the argument, but it also reveals the book’s central tension: Varoufakis wants very much to believe that capitalism has already ended, and he occasionally treats that desire as proof. His thesis is compelling: capitalism has not merely decayed; it has... Continue reading → - [When Beauty Is Contaminated](https://ernestjunius.com/thousand-cranes-when-beauty-is-contaminated/): Kawabata searches for deeper truth, turning the tea ceremony into a chamber of guilt, desire, and inherited shame. Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes turns the Japanese tea ceremony on its head. What is usually a spectacle of beauty and restraint—a refuge of calm, clarity, and refinement—becomes instead a chamber of guilt, desire, and contamination. When I first encountered the tea ceremony as an art student in London, whisking bitter matcha in my dorm room and confusing everyone in the hallway, I understood it only as an aesthetic practice. Later, reading Okakura Kakuzō’s The Book of Tea, I learned its greater significance:... Continue reading → - [The Case Against Being Informed](https://ernestjunius.com/the-case-against-being-informed/): Knowledge is power. But knowing, I’ve learned, is not the same as knowledge. When I was a child, I was told to read the newspaper every day. I hated it. The headlines had nothing to do with me or my own little world, and when I wandered into the economic section—all fancy graphs and jargon—I would ask my mother to explain. She never did. “It’s too complicated for you,” she’d say without even glancing at the page. Still, the habit persisted, albeit on and off, all the way into my first job as a copywriter, when reading newspapers was practically... Continue reading → ## Pages - [Contact](https://ernestjunius.com/contact/) - [Newsletter](https://ernestjunius.com/newsletter/): I’m starting a newsletter.Short, bullet-point notes on books worth reading and ideas worth keeping. Nojunk. No ads. Just things I’d genuinely share with a friend. Sign up for free. - [About Me](https://ernestjunius.com/about/): Hi, I’m Ernest. I write about literature, branding, and the texture of everyday life. I’m also the founder of Kelas Karya and Karya Raya, where I help children across Indonesia write and publish their own books. My work spans literary fiction, essays, book reviews, and explorations of Indonesian culture. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok. - [Projects](https://ernestjunius.com/projects/) - [Articles](https://ernestjunius.com/articles/) - [](https://ernestjunius.com/home/): Hi, I’m Ernest I write about literature, branding, and the texture ofeveryday life. I’m also the founder of Kelas Karya and Karya Raya,where I help children across Indonesia write and publish their ownbooks. My work spans literary fiction, essays, book reviews, andexplorations of Indonesian culture. You can find me on Instagram andTikTok. [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)